


Evolution, Extinction

by momebie (katilara)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan's brain caught on that few seconds when he thought Noah might be interested in Adam. He examined it. Did he want to touch Noah? Did he want to touch Adam? No. It didn’t seem so. Not that he’d gone digging that deep to find out. If his dreams had taught him anything it was that there were some wells you just didn’t uncap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evolution, Extinction

**Author's Note:**

> For Lisa, who only wanted Ronan to kiss the worst possible person.

“Yo, homos!”

Ronan closed the door to his locker, making it possible to see Gansey’s pained face and, farther down the hall, Kavinsky and Prokopenko loping toward them. School hadn’t been out for more than fifteen minutes, but they’d both already sloughed out of their uniforms and into jeans and t-shirts. Kavinsky’s v-neck was deeper, displaying the top of the line of his breastbone. Near identical gold chains hung from their necks. 

Gansey fiddled with his bag for a moment before turning on his heel. “Joseph,” he said, in exactly the same way their Latin teacher would have said it if Kavinsky had forgotten his homework. 

“No need for the tone,” Kavinsky said. “I just stopped by for a chat. Wanted to see if you could tell me what it is you do in bed to keep that one so obedient these days.” 

Ronan pushed forward, putting himself between them. “Why, you need some tips?” He nodded toward Prokopenko. “You stepping out on him, Pro?”

Prokopenko’s eyes narrowed and he lifted his chin. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and started flicking it. 

“Don’t you ever get tired of this farce?” Gansey asked, ever practical. There was a pull at the edge of his words. “Aren’t there other jokes you can tell? It’s not like there’d be anything wrong with it if I _were_.” He thought a moment. “Except for the obedience part.” 

Kavinsky crossed his arms, smug. “You’re awful smart for someone hiding behind his pitbull.” 

“Oh for the love of-” Ronan said. He spun around and grabbed onto Ganseys’ tie, dragging him forward. He realized mid-tug that he didn’t know why he’d done it, why he’d allowed himself to be egged on. It bothered him, but not as much as he was bothered by the fact that he was now standing with his face centimeters from his best friend’s and he didn’t know how to get out of it without taking advantage of someone who was weaker than him or looking weak himself. Both outcomes were deplorable.

A creeping fear had been growing in Gansey’s eyes whenever they passed over Ronan over the several months since Ronan had lost his father. Now, as Ronan held him close and looked his startled, slack form up and down, he could see that it was full blown. Ronan, in Gansey’s eyes, had become unpredictable, capable of anything, and whatever anything was it wasn’t expected to be nice. Ronan made a note to work on that between them even as he tried to look as intimidating as possible for the benefit of their audience. 

Gansey blinked, eyes wide. Then he tilted his head realizing that Ronan didn’t have any intention of kissing him. He exhaled and then started laughing. Ronan, thankful, caught the laugh and spit it back at him. He gently pushed Gansey into the lockers with his fist and straightened his sweater where it had been twisted. 

“I’ll see you at the car then?” Gansey asked. Ronan nodded and stepped aside so Gansey could pass him. Gansey didn’t look at Kavinsky or Prokopenko as he left. 

Ronan stood, gripping his bag over his shoulder and glaring at Kavinsky until he heard the door bang shut at the end of the hall. Kavinsky closed the distance between them by leaning toward Ronan in an improbable way that made his relationship with gravity look like a mere suggestion. He reminded Ronan of the siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp. Ronan wondered briefly which one he’d be, but he didn’t need to. There was absolutely nothing ladylike about Joseph Kavinsky. 

“You know,” Kavinsky said. “If Three has cut you off, I’ll be more than happy to fill your needs.”

Ronan continued to stare at him blankly and was annoyed when Kavinsky didn’t seem ruffled in the slightest. “I wouldn’t kiss you,” he said, “if we were the only two people in the world. I would jack off by myself in a corner for a thousand years before I’d let your lips anywhere near me.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan said. He placed his hands in his pockets and headed toward the exit, whistling a small tune to put a cap on how done he was with the conversation. 

“Anytime, lover,” Kavinsky called after him. “You’ll know where to find me!”

\- - -

Ronan opened his bedroom door hoping Gansey would be sitting up working out the mysteries of the universe. Instead he found the main room of Monmouth cloaked in shadow and punctuated by Gansey’s light snores. He hung in the doorway for a few moments, trying to decide whether to go back to bed or venture out and risk waking Gansey. He didn’t want to be the one to take anything so hard won from his friend.

“Shit,” he said softly, and slipped out of his room and down the wall to the bathroom/kitchen/laundry. He closed the door gently before turning the light on. When he did Noah appeared in the middle of the room. Ronan jumped. “Shit!” he said, louder this time. “What the hell, Noah?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Noah said. He rubbed lightly at his eyes with the back of his fist in a way that reminded Ronan of Matthew. 

Ronan felt his shoulders loosen. “It’s usually easier if you’re lying down. Like, in a bed.” He reached around Noah and pulled a beer from the fridge. A chill rolled across his bare arms and he shivered, looking up to see if there was a window open. 

“I don’t like lying down much,” Noah said. 

Ronan pulled the cap off the beer and offered the first sip to Noah, who shook his head. It was a courtesy Ronan couldn’t help even though Noah rarely ate and never accepted his beer. He wondered where Gansey had found such a straight edged orphan. He couldn’t remember them starting to be friends, but he also couldn’t remember a time before Noah. He shrugged and took a pull. 

“Do you ever think about what it’s like to touch other people?” Noah asked. 

“That’s creepy,” Ronan said, without accusation. He’d never say it out loud, but he had. Ronan found himself touching very few people since his father’s death. “Who were you thinking about?”

“Adam.” 

Ronan thought about this. Gansey’s new friend was mild. He was _meek_ , like, inherit the earth meek. He took up so little space and so little of Ronan’s attention it was almost like he wasn’t there. Like he was trying _not_ to be there. 

“Adam,” he agreed. “You could probably ask him.” Ronan didn’t know much about Adam, because he honestly hadn’t been paying attention, but Adam didn’t strike him as the kind of person who would be offended. 

Now that he considered it, Gansey had been flittering about Adam full time lately as if the boy was one of his artifacts. Talking about Adam when he wasn’t there and hanging over Adam’s shoulder when he was, as he taught Gansey how to change his own oil or whatever it is they did with their heads together around the Pig for hours every afternoon. As if that was hard or special. Something like adrenaline surged in Ronan. He couldn’t place it. He took another sip of the beer and didn’t realize he was biting down on the glass until his teeth started to hurt. 

Noah was shaking his head. “It’s not like that. He just seems like he could use it sometimes.” 

“Are you saying that because you know what it’s like?” Ronan asked. He took a few steps back and leaned against the door. The light flickered. Or it seemed like it had. It was still lit, but there wasn’t any way Noah could have flickered on his own. 

“Can you turn off the light?” Noah asked. 

Ronan did and Noah craned his head so that he could see the night appear, illuminating the windows as if asking to be let in. Ronan finished his beer, keeping his eyes on Noah, but not really seeing him. It wasn’t that Ronan felt like he missed being touched, really. The people he wanted to touch him were no longer there, so it was simply an absence now. Most of him felt like an absence. 

Other boys their age were overdosing on touching. Getting to know the townie girls, flying out of Aglionby on weekends to pick up girls from other schools for...whatever reason one would have to do such a thing. He would concede that girls sometimes smelled nice, but that was about the end of their appeal as far as he could tell. They all gave him disgusted looks whenever he tried to race them at stoplights. 

His brain caught on that few seconds when he thought Noah might be interested in Adam. He examined it. Did he want to touch Noah? _Did he want to touch Adam?_ No. It didn’t seem so. Not that he’d gone digging that deep to find out. If his dreams had taught him anything it was that there were some wells you just didn’t uncap. 

Ronan dropped his beer bottle gently in the small plastic trash can by the toilet. “Night, Noah,” he said, and slipped out of the room and back across the wall to his own.

\- - -

Monmouth was bustling with activity by the time Blue blew in through the second floor door. She toed off her shoes and perched next to Ronan on the edge of Gansey’s bed.

“Maggot,” he said amiably. 

“Jerk,” she replied. “What are they doing?” 

Gansey had stretched a length of black paper next to his recent, high def satellite image of the ley line. The two rivers snaked through the large room and lapped at the far wall in the air from the window AC. There were books and charts along the outer edge and Gansey, Adam, and Noah were all on their hands and knees scribbling on the dark paper with bits of fat, pastel sidewalk chalk. Chainsaw pranced up and down the satellite image, surveying the work, looking back at Ronan every minute or so to make sure she was allowed to continue.

“We’re charting the stars as they are above the ley line on St. Marks Eve, Jane!” Gansey said, his voice ringing with the excitement that new ideas always brought out in him. “I thought, what if their pull has something to do with the way the walls are so thin that night. Get some chalk, you can help Noah out towards the door.” 

Blue watched them for a minute and then drew her legs up on the bed to cross them. “No,” she said. “I think I’m good supervising.” She flipped her yellow, fringed skirt out so that it draped over her knees and covered her lap.

“Ronan’s already supervising,” Adam said without looking up. 

Blue looked at Ronan. “Yeah, but do you really trust him to keep you from making bad choices, though?” 

“All of my choices are excellent,” Ronan sniffed. “For instance.” He pulled up his elbow and rolled it into her, knocking her sideways onto the bed. Noah laughed. 

Blue stayed where she was, clinging to the sheets and watching the boys work. Ronan grabbed her ankles from where they were hanging awkwardly off the edge and pulled them into his lap. He straightened her skirt out. Blue shifted so that she could curl comfortably onto her side, feet still splayed across his thighs. She looked up at him curiously. He looked back at her. 

Her eyes shifted away and he followed her gaze. Adam was watching the two of them now, something dark dancing about his face. Not that that was a meaningful observation. He’d been walking in shade since sacrificing himself to Cabeswater. Blue seemed to find it meaningful, though. She pulled her feet away from him and curled into a tighter ball. Chainsaw flew back to Ronan and settled onto his knee, chastising Blue with a caw. 

Ronan ran his fingers lightly over Chainsaw’s crown a few times before leaning back and resting himself onto his elbows. He tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. In the early days at Monmouth-before Adam and Blue, before learning that Noah was dead and not simply antisocial, before window AC units-Ronan and Gansey used to hang upside down off Gansey’s bed and try to find images in the stains on the ceilings and walls as if they were watching clouds. 

He eased himself up again to check on his supervisees. The three on the floor were working away, flipping through books and blowing pink and purple and green dust all over the place. Noah got a light blue hand print on part of Ursa Major and Gansey tutted and bounced an eraser off his shoulder. Blue hadn’t moved, but she’d closed her eyes. 

Ronan liked Blue. He hadn’t ever really disliked her, though he understood why his disinterest in her at the beginning might make her think so. Especially since he’d spent the last year or so carefully cultivating the kind of disinterest that was offensive. It just wasn’t worth the effort getting invested in a person if you didn’t know whether or not they were going to stick around. She’d proven rather unshakable so far, which was good. Adam needed someone he couldn’t shake off. Now more than ever. Not that he’d be able to lose any of the rest of them if he tried, but Blue seemed to represent something different to him.

Chainsaw hopped off his lap as he pushed back and draped himself over the bed so he could hang his head off the back of it. He crossed his hands over his chest and she settled onto his laced fingers. Ronan studied the bottom foot of the wall for several minutes. “Umbrella,” he said to himself. “Duck. Monster truck.” 

The mattress shifted and Blue settled herself next to him. Stray, choppy dark hairs escaped from her many clips and dangled toward the floor. “Is that your Christmas list?” she asked. 

“The only thing on my Christmas list is coal.” 

“Because it’s what you’re getting anyway?”

He shook his head, which made him dizzy with the blood pooling toward his temples. “Paradox. Santa gives coal to bad children because they want other things. If you’re a bad child and you want coal you get something else you don’t want. Something that’s usually more useful. Like trouser socks. Or bathroom sponges.” 

When Blue didn’t reply, Ronan tilted his head to look at her. She was staring at him. “I didn’t know you were capable of putting that many words together.”

“You don’t know a lot of things I’m capable of.” She frowned slightly to let him know he was right. He studied her mouth, trying to see it the way Adam did, pretending he wanted to be close to it. He didn’t. “Calamari rings,” he said to the wall.

She nodded. “Spaghetti-os.”

\- - -

The thin carpet on the landing outside of Adam’s room was very different from the plush, velvet red carpet in the sanctuary of St. Agnes. Ronan scuffed the knuckles of his left hand over it, pilling the synthetic fibers. With his right hand he ate a slice of pizza. Grease had run down to his wrist and was slowly soaking into his knotted leather bands.

He heard Adam before he saw him, but he didn’t stand to greet him. As much as Ronan hated to admit it, sometimes it hurt a little when Kavinsky called him Gansey’s dog. He knew he wasn’t, but he still petulantly rebelled against any traits he might share with a golden retriever. 

When Adam finally came around the corner Ronan’s chest tightened a bit. He’d never noticed before how much Adam looked like a marionette in rest, even when he was moving. His shoulders were hunched. Everything about him hung towards the floor, weary. Magic forests, Ronan decided, must be incredibly heavy. Even when they were invisible. Adam’s face shifted when he saw Ronan. For the briefest moment Ronan thought he might smile, but his mouth merely twitched and he toed the heel of Ronan’s boot with his tennis shoe as he dug in his pocket for his keys. 

“Pizza?” Ronan dropped his half-eaten slice on the top of the box and held it up. 

“We have school tomorrow,” Adam said, but he took the box out of Ronan’s hands and left the door open behind him when he went in. 

Ronan pushed himself up the wall and followed. It had become a ritual. At least once a week when Adam was on the late shift at the trailer factory, Ronan would buy a pizza and then sit in the church with it cooling beside him on a pew until it was time for Adam to get off work. Then he would beat Adam to his front door. Adam’s meager objection was all a part of it.

Once the door was closed Adam sat heavily on his bed and untied his laces. Then he flopped backwards onto the bed, too tired to take them off. Ronan used the toe of his boot to knock the shoes off Adam’s feet. They dropped to the floor with dull thuds. 

Adam wriggled out of his shirt without sitting up and stole a piece of pizza from the box. He held it above his head, eyeing it the way a French queen might eye a blunt metal blade. “Peppers,” he accused. 

Ronan retrieved his half eaten slice and sat on the floor with his back pressed to Adam’s mattress and Adam’s warm thigh. “It’s important for growing boys to eat their greens.” 

“Did your mother tell you that?”

“Didn’t yours?”

Adam was silent for so long Ronan would have thought he’d passed out if he couldn’t hear his chewing. Ronan drew his knees up and rested a cheek on them, hugging himself to keep his legs together. Ronan had almost dozed off himself by the time Adam said, “I guess some of the canned vegetables were green.” 

Ronan was always chasing sleep. It never came to him the way it seemed to come to those who asked nothing of it. Which is why it was so curious to him that he often felt like he could take a nap in Adam’s presence. Maybe self-righteous exhaustion was contagious. 

They sat quietly while Adam ate another piece of pizza. When he’d finished it he pushed the mostly empty box off the side of the bed and tugged his jeans off without getting up. Ronan didn’t look. Instead he carefully imagined what Adam would look like as he lifted his hips off the sheets to push the well-worn denim down over his ass and thighs. The jeans dropped to the floor next to him and the springs in the mattress creaked as Adam settled in. 

“Ronan?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I saw another one today.” 

“Man or woman?” 

“It was a child, a small boy.” Adam paused before speaking again, lower this time, “I think it was me.” 

Ronan closed his eyes and swore under his breath. The recent tilting of Adam’s mind was a thing Ronan knew well. He’d been living with nightmares since he was a boy, both his horrors and his father’s devil. He was used to the terror of it. It never stopped being terrifying, but at least he’d learned to control his skipping heart and his stinging skin over the years. He wouldn’t wish this on anyone, let alone someone whose horrors had been, until recently, inescapable. In some ways Adam had traded one master for another, which Ronan could see was wearing him away. Every particle of Adam wanted so desperately to belong to no one. 

Ronan knew that wasn’t how it worked. “Hey,” he said. “Do you mind if I sleep here? Gansey’s planning on throwing a rager for the rowing team tonight and I really need my beauty sleep. I can take you in in the morning.”

They both knew that wasn’t true. Gansey had quit the rowing team. He’d also never thrown a party in his life, and if he decided to start he’d probably only invite Glendower. Ronan thought about sending an invitation to the Cabeswater. Gansey’s neat handwriting on embossed paper: _You’re Invited! To be the answer to my every prayer._

It wasn’t a lie so much as it was a fairy tale, the moral of which was, _it’s okay to not be alone_. There were several seconds of tense silence before Adam said, “will you turn out the light?”

Ronan did. Then he pulled off his boots and his black muscle tee and dropped them at the foot of the bed. Still in his jeans, he climbed up the small mattress next to Adam and dropped onto his stomach, using his elbow as a pillow. Both of the boys hung off the outside of the mattress slightly. In the middle of it they were flush together, damp skin building heat where it touched. Ronan could feel Adam’s pulse course through him and he assumed that the ley line felt the same way against Adam’s skin. 

Just before sleep took him Ronan thought about sending Adam an invitation of his own. _You’re invited._ Not that Adam would accept it. Adam wasn’t in the habit of accepting things. 

That night Ronan dreamt of waking up in his parents’ bed back at The Barns. The sheets next to him were empty but warm and his hands smelled of engine oil.

\- - -

Ronan had been in the BMW pacing the highway for an hour, making loops from the exits on one side of Henrietta to the other, each time stretching it an exit further. He figured it would only take him two days to do the whole state that way, and maybe by then he’d be able to control the pitched anger that always forced itself up into his throat after dark.

Fifteen miles up from home there was a small cluster of lights in the dark that coalesced into a fast food restaurant when he got close enough. He slowed the car and pulled into the parking lot. Noah appeared next to him in the passenger seat. 

“Are you always there, even when you’re not?” Ronan asked. 

“Can I have an orange creamslush?” Noah replied. 

“You can’t drink it.” 

“Strawberry then,” Noah said, choosing a flavor he knew Ronan would give in and drink eventually. 

Ronan rolled his window down at the drive-thru and ordered the two drinks. When he pulled around to the delivery window the woman working was older. She had tight black curls cut close to her head and her shirt pulled where the buttons met over her ponderous breasts. She took his card and handed the drinks through. “You taking one to someone special?” she asked. 

“Damn right I am,” Noah said. 

“Just thirsty.” Ronan accepted his card back. “Long drive tonight.” 

“Don’t I know it, honey,” the woman replied. “You be careful, there are crazies out there.”

“What about the crazies in here?” Noah whispered. 

Ronan just nodded and pulled back onto the highway, leaving his window down. The hot summer wind whipped around them in the cabin and Ronan’s t-shirt tickled his skin where it danced near his collar bone. In silence, they stretched his pacing another two miles, then another five, then another ten. They were half an hour from home when a set of obnoxiously bright headlights pulled up behind him and rode his tail. 

“Trouble,” Noah said. 

Ronan squinted into the rearview mirror and in the brief shots of orange from the street lights lining the road he could see Kavinsky behind him, manic grin stretched wide under a pair of chunky shades with yellow lenses. Night sunglasses. What a prick. Ronan slammed on his brakes. 

Kavinsky slammed his as well and swerved around him, barely missing clipping his rear bumper, and pulled along side in the right hand lane. He rolled down his window and leaned out of it, resting his chin on his forearm where it was draped over the door, not minding the road. Noah rolled down Ronan’s passenger side window and glared at Kavinsky. Kavinsky stared through him. 

There was no one else on their side of the highway. Ronan pulled his foot off the gas and let the BMW’s speed lag, pulling down through the gears until he was settled in first. 

“From a roll!” Kavinsky shouted over to him. “Three! Two!” The Mitsubishi’s engine whined and he pulled off before counting to one. 

“What a prick!” Ronan yelled, but he shifted up and the BMW growled after him. The Mitsubishi's rev limiter chugged a little as it hit the red, Kavinsky dogging the shift into fourth _again_. It was harder to catch up in the BMW from a roll, but Ronan managed it. He pulled level with Kavinsky and gave him a salute with his middle finger as he passed by and then threw the BMW into the right hand lane in front of the Mitsubishi, punching on his hazards to claim the victory. 

Kavinsky flipped his brights, but kept pace with the BMW as Ronan edged it closer and closer to its top speed. 

“Ronan,” Noah warned. 

“You don’t have to stay,” Ronan said, and he shifted again and dove off the highway onto a tight exit at the last moment. The BMW took a sharp right at the red light and flew up the dark, two lane street at 65. The Mitsubishi stayed with him. He slammed on his brakes again and turned left onto a dirt road, the BMW’s suspension creaking as the tires popped over the pock marks and bumps. 

Darkness loomed in front of Ronan, his headlights peeling it away bit by bit to reveal the tight lane of trees on either side of him and the dust he was throwing up. Behind him Kavinsky had turned up his stereo and Ronan could hear muffled bass drops and the rattling of the Mitsubishi’s plastic panels around the sound. 

The road took a turn to the right and then to the left and with each one the back end of the BMW slid out and threatened to get away from him. It straightened out again and suddenly they were bumping onto asphalt. It widened to two lanes and the Mitsubishi snaked around him on the inside of a sloping corner. 

For five breathless seconds, Ronan watched the back of the Mitsubishi pulling away. He had never felt so awake and present in his life. The night and the sound of engines sung through him. He frowned to keep from looking like a foolish clown, like Kavinsky. This was where happiness lived. Right on the edge, daring people to reach out and take it. 

Then the Mitsubishi’s brake lights flared and washed the interior of the BMW’s cabin in bright red. Kavinsky fishtailed a bit. Ronan jerked his wheel and stood up onto his brake, sliding into the other lane to try to avoid the collision. Their tires squealed with the effort of gripping to the worn, smooth asphalt. When they finally came to a stop Noah was no longer in the passenger seat. 

Ronan’s heart was beating so hard he could feel it in the tips of his fingers. He pried them off the steering wheel and climbed out of the car. Moving cautiously on his jittery legs he walked around his front bumper to inspect it for damage. Nothing. Kavinsky’s Mitsubishi was sideways across the road in front of him, resting a foot away from a bright red metal gate closed across the road. All Ronan could smell was burned rubber and the incoming storm. 

Kavinsky slung his door open and tripped out, laughing so hard he had the hiccups. “You,” he said, pointing a shaking finger towards Ronan’s head, “are a marvelous cunt, aren’t you?” He closed one eye and made a makeshift gun with his fingers, which he shot at Ronan’s temple. Both boys stood in the wash of their headlights, gulping air and trying to catch their breath. 

Ronan ran his hand over his head until it rested on the back of his neck. “I have no idea where we are,” he said finally.

Kavinsky shrugged. “You know where the highway is, that’s all you need to know.” He slipped his hand into his pocket and back out again, holding it palm up towards Ronan. “Want some E?”

Ronan did not want some E. In general, he didn’t want anything stronger than Everclear and Kool-Aid. The actual Kool-Aid, with the creepy red pitcher on the front. But looking down at his hands, feeling the start of the comedown, he wanted _something_. The night couldn’t just end like this.

He stretched a hand out toward Kavinsky who jerked his hand away and placed both tablets on his tongue. “Come get it,” he said. “You don’t want to leave me here off my mind until morning, do you?”

Shifting from foot to foot, Ronan hesitated. That was probably the smartest outcome, all things considered. Ronan back home in his bed and Kavinsky wherever the fuck Kavinsky ever was. He knew there was was no part of him that should feel responsible for Joseph Kavinsky's poor life choices, but he imagined the look on Gansey's face if the worthless piece of shit turned up dead with Ronan having been the last one to see him alive. He'd had enough of that look from Gansey to last him a lifetime. 

He could feel his adrenaline lagging. He didn't like it. Ronan turned off his brain and lunged, grabbing Kavinsky by his thin shoulders and swiping the partially dissolved tablet from Kavinsky’s tongue with his own. 

He tried to pull away, but Kavinsky grabbed either side of Ronan’s neck, his thin fingers surprisingly strong as he held Ronan in place. No matter how hard Ronan pulled back Kavinsky came with him, until the BMW’s front bumper dug into the backs of his calves and he tripped backwards onto it. Kavinsky came down with him then, too. 

Kavinsky’s mouth was wide and wet over Ronan’s and he used his tongue the way the knights in Gansey’s tales used battering rams. It was not at all what Ronan thought kissing was supposed to be like, but then, everything about Kavinsky was wrong. That’s what had brought them here to begin with. Ronan’s anxious, nightly search for something outside of himself. 

When Kavinsky finally pulled away, panting, Ronan leaned forward and spat onto the ground next to their feet, sending what was left of the E tablet into the dirt. He brought his hand up and wiped Kavinsky’s saliva away from his mouth with the back of his arm. Kavinsky looked at him through heavily lidded eyes. “I know you.”

“I don’t think so,” Ronan said. 

Kavinsky squeezed his fingers in on Ronan’s neck gently, just to remind him that he could, and then he let his hands slide down so that he was bracing himself against Ronan’s shoulders. Their thighs were tangled against the front of the BMW and Ronan couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched so much of another person at once. He wished it wasn’t Kavinsky. He _wished-_

“No, I do,” Kavinsky said. “We’re brothers, you and I.” The light from the cars picked out the gold highlights near Kavinsky’s hair line and made him look supernaturally crowned. 

“I have brothers.” Ronan rolled his shoulder, trying to pull it from Kavinsky’s grip. “I don’t need anymore.”

Kavinsky looked down at him, cheeks tinged red, lazy mouth blissful as the drug took effect. “That sounds like a challenge.”


End file.
